$49 Fire Tablet Only Comes with 90 Day Warranty

Here’s something that a lot of people didn’t notice, myself included, about the new $49 Fire tablet that Amazon has just released.

It turns out that it only comes with a 90 day warranty instead of the usual 1 year warranty.

Amazon’s Kindle ereaders and Fire tablets have always come with a 1 year warranty when purchased new or certified refurbished, and the Kids Edition models come with 2 years.

That’s why it comes as a total surprise to see the $49 Fire only getting a 3 month warranty against potential defects.

For people buying it now as a gift for Christmas, that time limit will almost be expired by then.

You can purchase a separate SquareTrade warranty at Amazon from the add-on items list for Fire tablets. They offer 1, 2 and 3 year warranties, starting at $9.99 for 1 year.

Amazon had to find ways to cut costs with the $49 Fire to get the price that low. Reducing the warranty by 9 months is a sure way to minimize recurring customer expenses.

As the warranty help page at Amazon notes, the 90 day warranty only applies to customers in the United States and Japan. If you purchase the Fire tablet from Amazon and authorized retailers in other countries, it comes with the standard 1 year warranty, most likely because it’s required by law in those countries.

I bought one of these a few weeks ago for a gift clearly marked as such and not registered to my account. Upon reading this article I contacted Amazon customer service. They informed me the 90 day clock started when they shipped the unit. At Christmas when opened an unregistered Fire7’s warranty will be expired. Amazon said it is the way their system is set up and cannot be changed. I could purchase one at Best Buy for instance and the warranty clock would not activate until opened and registered. Amazon suggested I buy the $10 extended warranty to resolve the issue. I suggested Amazon who caused this problem and relies upon an inability to tweak their own system is less than credible. They cannot adjust their system, really who is dumb enough to swallow that? They cannot gift the $10 extended warranty. Because of that short sighted stance the unit is returned for a full refund. And no we will not be purchasing a Fire elsewhere. For $10 they lose future Kindle E-book sales and assorted other items that keeps the Fire burning. That’s fine with me there are other alternatives.